Power to the people

20 years ago, if a journalist wrote a bad review about your restaurant, you were looking at a few dark months.

Two weeks ago, the New York Times wrote a now-famous piece on Amazon’s tough company culture. Amazon’s employees didn’t like it and took to LinkedIn publishing and wrote at least a 100 critiques. For the next 10 days or so, post and counter post dominated the narrative. (My observation is that the biggest winner from that saga was LinkedIn publishing!)

So, if a journalist writes a bad review about a restaurant today, it doesn’t matter as much. Tripadvisor and Yelp matter a lot more than a single review. That’s the right thing. Today, power on the internet is not bestowed. It is largely earned. Thanks to technology, this generation has intuitively understood the wisdom of the crowds.

There’s a lot of talk about how changes in technology are leading us to a world where machines take over. However, the way I see it, we seem to be building technology that is increasingly letting humanity shine through.